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Installing BackTrack 4 on MacBook Pro (Late 2009 Model)

Hello all, I just burned my BackTrack 4 DVD and am a complete and total newbie to Linux. I have used Mandriva and Ubuntu a few times before, but don't know the first thing about command lines. But, I am eager to learn and hope to be fluent with Linux soon. I apologize if this has been posted on other forums or threads before, but I was wondering if anyone out there could make me a quick How-To on installing BackTrack 4 to my MacBook Pro. I don't know what rEFIt is, but I have it installed, and I am currently running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Again, I apologize for being a noob, but I hate having to scour hundreds of threads to find what I need. And hey, maybe this will solve problems for other people as well. Thanks to everyone for any help that you can provide.

Re: Installing BackTrack 4 on MacBook Pro (Late 2009 Model)

Originally Posted by spankster32808

Hello all, I just burned my BackTrack 4 DVD and am a complete and total newbie to Linux. I have used Mandriva and Ubuntu a few times before, but don't know the first thing about command lines. But, I am eager to learn and hope to be fluent with Linux soon. I apologize if this has been posted on other forums or threads before, but I was wondering if anyone out there could make me a quick How-To on installing BackTrack 4 to my MacBook Pro. I don't know what rEFIt is, but I have it installed, and I am currently running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Again, I apologize for being a noob, but I hate having to scour hundreds of threads to find what I need. And hey, maybe this will solve problems for other people as well. Thanks to everyone for any help that you can provide.

Hey there and welcome to the forum!

Coming from a guy who has messed his MacBook up countless times, restored it, and found a solution after 5 Kg of Ibuprofen,
I have to agree with Gitsnik here.

Originally Posted by Gitsnik

Pro (literally, an Apple professional) Tip: Don't. The support is not great (nor should it be) and you will get strange issues from time to time.

Trust Gitsnik. Your wireless card will not be recognized, and getting the driver for it amongst other things is nearly impossible. Having tried 2-3 Linux OS' now, the Apple hardware won't do as much justice as Windows-native hardware will.

Get VMWare or VirtualBox and run backtrack inside it. Go from there. You won't be able to crack wireless without a USB dongle, but that's not the only reason you installed backtrack... is it?

Parallels will work too, but VMWare works best.
And the USB Wireless is a must since the Airport Extreme card will not be recognized (but you probably figured it out)

If you still want to try despite our warnings, let me know if you have a Windows partition, how much harddrive space you're willing to free up, what knowledge you have with Disk Utility, drive formatting, and of course your experience with Mac, and I might be able to get the basics down for you.

But again, we advise against it due to the high death-toll from headaches!

Re: Installing BackTrack 4 on MacBook Pro (Late 2009 Model)

Now, let me ask this. If I am running BackTrack 4 in Parallels or VMWare Fusion, will I still need a USB Bluetooth dongle? I have heard on other forums that if you have a Windows partition installed and have installed the Apple Boot Camp drivers on the Windows Platform, you can navigate to your Windows partition from BackTrack and use ndiswrapper to enable the Broadcomm driver. Any truth to this? And kamikaze, I am very experienced with Mac OS X, at least the graphical engine, I have a 500GB internal HDD, and am only using 200GB for Mac, and my Windows partition is 20GB, so I have plenty of space to exhaust for Linux.

Re: Installing BackTrack 4 on MacBook Pro (Late 2009 Model)

Like Gitsnik said, the support is lacking for Apple products. No, your wifi is not likely to be supported, and yes, you will need to procure an aircrack-ng compatible wifi dongle in order to crack some wirelessness.

I haven't tested yet to see if the trackpad is supported in BT 4 Final, it wasn't supported out-of-the box in BT4 Pre. Your onboard bluetooth *should* work just fine on a hard drive install.

I'll be finishing my howto for the hdd install this week, and I'll let you and everyone else interested know how to do it.

Also, using a bootcamp partition won't work - it won't be mountable on your vm. If you're not interested in a hdd install, vmware is very supported, and simple to pass a usb dongle through to the virtual machine. For simplicity, I recommend using vmware.

thou shalt treat all computers as thou wouldst treat thyself, for thou art the creator of thine own problems.

Re: Installing BackTrack 4 on MacBook Pro (Late 2009 Model)

Originally Posted by xX_Spiidey_Xx

Your onboard bluetooth *should* work just fine on a hard drive install

As others have confirmed it's hit and miss, but it's got the same problems as the wifi cards - virtualised or not you're unlikely to be able to inject, and just as unlikely to be able to sniff on them generically.

Still not underestimating the power...

There is no such thing as bad information - There is truth in the data, so you sift it all, even the crap stuff.

Re: Installing BackTrack 4 on MacBook Pro (Late 2009 Model)

I am interested in a real install of BT4 on my MacBook Pro so I can use the ExpressCard slot. There aren't any Atheros based USB cards around and I'd really like to use one so ExpressCard is my only hope.

I've gotten it installed on the HD with some effort and I'd love to get the Broadcom running just for regular surfing and updating the distro.